Major Update to High Velocity Bowling

Hello everyone! Team RamRod here, the developers of High Velocity Bowling. Today we break our long silence with an equally long blog post.

To give you some background on the HVB development team, we are a small team who works on several projects. As some of you know, Big Ern has left our neck of the woods (we still miss him). But, the team has since picked up the reins and is now leading a new charge for HVB.

A lot of you have been asking about HVB, and we are here to deliver great news. We are pleased to announce that we putting the finishing touches on a new update for HVB, which will hit the PlayStation Network TOMORROW! Excited? Well, the best part of this is that the new update – all new features included – is FREE! For our brothers and sisters in the north, that means FREE for you, too.

We can hear you now … “Wait, what? Really? I get online play in the update? Will it support my Playstation Friends List?” YES to all of the above. You will now be able to play with your friends online AND be able to chat with them using a PS3 headset or microphone. Feel free to chat and talk smack after comparing your stats and rankings on the online leaderboards that will be updated weekly.

PSN TROPHIES!

Yup! PSN Trophies – 12 new shiny and purty trophies (7 bronze, 4 silver and 1 gold trophy). The only way to earn these is to play online (fortunately, we added that too, ‘cause we’re awesome!). If you’re worried you don’t have the skills, don’t stress — if you’re persistent enough, you will still be able to earn most, if not all, of these as well. Here’s the list:

BRONZE:

Score 180 or higher in an online game.

Achieve an online rating of 1600 or more.

Knock down a total of 500 pins in online games.

Get 10 strikes in online games.

Get 15 spares in online games.

Win an online game.

Play 3 online games.

SILVER:

Score 250 or higher in an online game.

Knock down a total of 5000 pins in online games.

Get 25 wins in online games.

Get 75 strikes in online games.

GOLD:

Get 150 strikes in online games.

PLAYLISTS WITH IMPROVED AUDIO!

You can access the XMB while in-game for your own custom soundtracks, with support for playlists. We had custom music before, but were not able to incorporate playlists. Now with the new XMB custom music feature, you can bowl while listening to a mix of Beethoven, Frank Zappa, Britney Spears, Weird Al Yankovic, Gregorian Chants and Nirvana! And with the improved audio options, you’ll be able to crank up your tunes, character voices, and ambient sounds, OR turn them off altogether!

MORE TRICK SHOTS!

That’s right, we’ve included a section on the menu to start posting additional trick shot challenges. You’ll be given two new challenges with your update, and additional trick shots will be created for download in the future. These challenges will not only help you earn patches that you missed out on during your normal gameplay, but get you more stars for the leaderboards!

NEW BALL BAGS!

We’ve added a new and more realistic Ball Bag system in HVB. You can only bring four balls with you onto the lane in each bag, so you’ll have to choose wisely. You can name and save up to 24 different ball bags so you don’t have to individually choose four balls every time that you want to play. Be sure to mix and match so that there are some good hooking balls and some good straight rollers in your bag. This way, you’ll be prepared for any oil pattern or pin leave!

ALLEY SELECTION!

You can now choose which lane to play on (as long as you’re not in a tournament). This means that you can play in Spider’s Garage, Tiffany’s Toybox, the Zen Garden, or wherever you want!

NEW ADD-ON CONTENT

We are going to continue to provide new content for HVB. This content will include more sinister Trick Shots, more wacky characters, cool bowling balls and quirkier costumes.

Anxious to get your game on and strike it up? These exciting new features for HVB will truly make your bowling experience fun. We made the extra efforts to make sure we delivered a lot of fun into a whole lot of FREE for our devoted fans! Please make sure you continue to check back here for future updates on HVB. You’ve all waited so patiently for more – we’ll be sure to make it worth your wait!

well the idea with online trophies is better so people wouldn’t have to replay the game all over and delete save files. But I’m glad they added online to it. That was my only grief with the game when i got it. Plus trophies for all you junkies out there.

Wow, this update is so awesome, it’s almost orgasmic! I moved far away from my friends, so it’s awesome we can play this game together again but online, lol.

I bought this game about a year ago (I can’t believe it’s been that long now,) and I think it’s my favorite *casual game* on my ps3- I love bowling in real life, yet prices at bowling alleys could be a bit pricey when you have a bunch of friends with ya. Ten dollars to play bowling whenever? I was in.

I loved the custom soundtrack option on the game (just hit R1,) but switching to In-Game XMB controls ain’t bad. Trophy support will be awesome, good thing you get them while playing against other people instead of bots, etc. Alley selection was something that I wanted, I’m sure that other people would agree that you don’t wanna bowl at your character’s place everytime. Of course, Online play is the biggest part of the game for me, with mic support and whatnot.

Well, I’d like to give a big thanks to Team Ramrod for updating the game, I’ll be continuing to play it for quite a while now…

Thank you so much for not ditching this game! This is my absolute favorite PSN game to date and I am so amped to see this news today! Take Resistance 2, Little big Planet and all the other good Ps3 news and toss it aside for a bit, HVB is a huge selling point for sony and one they need to back this holiday through advertising it more. Awesome party /family game.

I’m loving this, first we get the system update 2.50 which in turn basically fixed a lot of problems.. Then we have an update for an excellent game that a lot of people turned away from, due to the fact that we were getting no responses from the developers; about what was happening with the game, and now its even better. thanks team ramrod its an awesome update. :)

Excellent surprise!!! Top marks guys, I was only thinking the other day that HVB was a great concept that never lived up to it’s true potentional. Online bowling is a great and much needed addition, and the trophies are the cherry on the cake! And free too!!!

First a great firmware update (loving being able to view Gametrailers.com on my TV and the new Account Management UI is pretty nifty too), now a great free HVB update, Sony are really on a roll this week. All they need to do now is confirm the rumour that HOME is launching on the 19th Nov (same day as the MS NXE update)…

I sold my Xbox 360 to get a PS3 because of Blu-Ray and the sixaxis controller. High Velocity Bowling is the best use of the sixaxis controller by far. I like wii bowling, but the graphics and overall playability of HVB put wii bowling to shame.

I agree 100% that this game needs to be advertised more. It could seriously bring over so many people that have wiis that yearn for actual HD graphics.

Thanks for the update me and my wife love this game but is difficult at times to come together and play this game do to work schedule and our son,now I can play with friends online so……mike the strike is back baby.

It’s a great update, and it’s free which is awesome. Unfortunately it’s still to hard to spin the ball accurately and the annoying, cliched characters and play lag (between physical swing and on-screen delivery) still make me want to throw my DS3 through my BRAVIA. Not sure I’ll bother. Sorry.

(BTW, given that the Wii uses very basic accelerometers is there any reason why the HVB controls should feel so more detached from the game than Wii Sports bowling does?)

I wish there was a way to dumb down the controls, using the L2 and R2 is such a horrible design. It alienates players that are not game savy. The spin should be placed on how the controller is tilted not on the button, it’s hard to get it right.

I had unlocked a ton of characters and balls, and then I had to send in my PS3 for service. This data wouldn’t copy on to a flash card, and couldn’t be recovered by a full system back up. Please change that.

Everyone that plays HVB online will be given both a rank and a rating. Your Rating is a number that can be best described as your HVB Online Skill as compared to other players. Everyone will start with a rating of 1500. As you play other people online, your rating will go up and down as you win and lose games. At first your rating might jump around a bit, but after you play a handful of games, it will begin to settle into a fairly accurate assessment of your bowling skill. It\’s a great way to find players online that should be closely matched to your personal skill level.
Everybody\’s rating is then sorted from highest to lowest, which determines your rank.